Mt 8:1-4
1When Jesus came down from the mountain, great crowds followed him. 2And then a leper approached, did him homage, and said, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” 3He stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I will do it. Be made clean.” His leprosy was cleansed immediately. 4Then Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one, but go show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.”
LEPER: In an ancient society like that of Palestine where there were hardly any medical doctors, sickness was not seen as a disease, that is, a bio-medical malfunctioning of an organism; it was considered an illness, a disvalued state of being affecting a person that disrupted his social networks and diminished or lost his meaning. Illness is not so much a medical matter as a matter of deviance from cultural values.
Lepers then were not considered to have a disease; “leprosy” was not treated as a disease and the leper was not helped to enable him to function. Rather leprosy was an illness; a leper was a deviance, “unclean,” and had to be excluded from the community.
People in antiquity paid little attention to impersonal cause, to the bio-medical aspects of the disease. They sought treatment in physicians who focused on the person’s individual meaning in society. Often healers had recourse to the divine; healers were thought to have special powers to cure, not so much disease as illness of people.
Jesus is seen by people as a spirit-filled prophet who vanquishes unclean spirits and a variety of illnesses and restores people to their place in the community. In the Gospel he cures a leper (someone affected by an “impure” skin ailment) and gives value and meaning to his life by restoring him to the community.